Is that coffee or is it wine?
by dionysus on August 15, 2011
Coffee or wine?
The proverbial shit hit the fan last week with a letter published in The Sunday Times on 7 August that traces of caffeine had been discovered in wine. Yvette Naude of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pretoria got more than she bargained for while doing tests on aroma profiles of so called coffee styled Pinotages.
Herewith an extract of her letter:
Some time ago we evaluated aroma compounds in Pinotage to see which combinations of compounds are responsible for the coffee-chocolate note in the so-called mocha-styled Pinotage. While busy analysing a number of mocha/coffee Pinotage wines I idly wondered if the coffee perception was not from wood products alone, but was instead from a little help of the real thing? Lo and behold we detected caffeine in one of the wines …
Upon contacting her for further comment all she would say is that she stands by her findings. The million dollar question is: what wine was these traces of caffeine found in? I did a little bit of amateur P.I work and chatted to a few winemakers. All were adamant that traces of caffeine are not a bi product of the wine making process and that basially the only way it can get there is if from somebody throwing their morning cup into a few vats.
The South African wine industry has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to additives in wine. Just s few years back a couple of KWV cronies were caught “juicing” or “spiking” wines. This is a form of cheating and can only be equated to what athletes do when taking steroids. Wines of South Africa (WOSA) have made a statement on the matter, it only took them a week. I am not to sure if their statement cleared things up or just added to the confusion. Either way this story won’t die.
My biggest concern is the damage to the reputation of the South African Wine industry should it be found that caffeine has been added to wine. It is no secret that, like most industries the South African wine trade is struggling. The last thing we need is bad press. First burn’t rubber, now caffeine! What next?
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